With the continuing advances and developments of electrical manufactures, the multimedia computers in new generation with high quality are widely used and more popular. The expenditure enhancement for computers also causes the popularization and more vigorous development of peripheral products. These peripheral devices such as hard discs, optical disc drives, scanners, printers and so on are introduced to enhance and expand variety functions of computers for providing users more convenient applications.
The CD-ROM is a convenient and popular device due to the enormity storage capacity of the compact discs and further due to the data containing music or image formats can be long-term preserved. Especially, following the performance promotion of peripheral devices such as audio chips, speakers and etc., the computer can provide good tone quality when playing the audio CDs. Therefore, some users are used to listen to music or speech sounds via the computers.
However, because the optical disc drives are peripheral apparatus of computer systems, the users have to boot the computer system first to enter the environment of the operation system. And then the related playing programs are executed to drive the optical disc drives and audio chips for playing music and speech sounds. However, when users just want to listen to music and do not want to operate other programs, it is required to spend a lot of time for booting the computer to enter the operation system and execute the playing programs. Comparatively, the conventional CD player is more convenient for users because they just need to dispose a CD into the CD player and press the “PLAY” button for playing. Besides, when the booting sequence is done, all devices of the system are maintained in the stand-by state will cause extra electrical consumption.
For overcoming the above issues, in some current designs, the computer will enter to a low power consumption mode when it is applied to play audio CDs. Namely, except the required devices used for playing, other peripheral devices are suspended to a lower consumption mode for saving electrical power. However, it is still required to complete the whole booting sequences, and then to control the computer entering the lower consumption mode for the audio CDs playing function.
Besides, in some other designs, an extra hardware of “CD-ROM playing module” is assembled in the computer, and on the casing thereof a control panel for operating the CD-ROM drive is mounted to perform the “CD-ROM drive playing function” when the computer is not booted. The extra control panel comprises those typical functional buttons such as “PLAY”, “STOP”, “FORWARD”, “BACKWARD”, “EJECT”,etc . . . .
It is noted that the aforementioned design also has many problems. First, there is a requirement to reserve some space in the computer casing for mounting wiring and hardware of the extra “CD-ROM playing module” therein. Especially, because these wiring and hardware are disposed onto the motherboard and assemblies of the computer casing, the users must buy the single brand of computer assembly to have the above playing function. In other words, for some userswho are used to assembling computers themselves, this will cause them losing the liberty of choosing the motherboard, optical disc drive, and computer casing from different brands. Additonally, due to the wiring and hardware are jointed onto the motherboard and computer casing by soldering, it is very difficult to assemble the “CD-ROM playing module” by the users themselves.
Further, some manufacturers try to change the design of keyboard, to have the functional buttons such as “PLAY”, “STOP”, “FORWARD”, “BACKWARD”, “EJECT”, etc. mounted on the keyboard, or to have a specific keyboard controller and specific functional buttons defined by the manufacturers. However, the users must buy the specific keyboards, which are applied to substitute for the general keyboards, for controlling the “CD-ROM playing module”. Namely the users also lose the liberty of choosing the brand or appearance of keyboards.
Except the above limitations of buying or assembling computers for users, the aforementioned “CD-ROM playing module” also causes prime cost increasing and lack of space because it is need to mount extra wiring and components. Thus the users have to pay more money for the CD-ROM playing function.